Very Pynchon

[jesse gooch]

Allen - I live in C-Vile, VA, and have driven through WV a few times with a few small stops. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. But I’ve never, in any way, been tempted to chat politics with the cashiers there. I will keep your email in mind next time I’m there in case the urge arises.

> On Oct 2, 2017, at 7:34 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This "Libertarian" I talked to yesterday is a Christian homeschooler who moved out to the part of WV where that sort of lifestyle has settled in due to historically low rents and taxes. She is a cashier at the owner operated natural food store I go to. Not groking her actual politics, I assumed that, like most of us who shop there, she was a Bleeding Heart so I thought I'd invite her to the Nancy Maclean event on Dec 17. I opened by asking her "You don't like Trump, do you?" which was a humorous gambit to which she responded "I don't really care whose in the White House but I don't think he's so bad" and then she went on to say "I'm really against any kind of government and think that people should be left along to solve their problems. We can all help each other.  I guess I'm a Libertarian." I said 'Well, if you think society can work by people's innate willingness to help one another, it sounds to me like your more a Classic Anarchist than any Libertarian I've heard of" She shot me a look to kill "I'm not an Anarchist. They try destroy government" to which I responded, "Nah, that's what The Bosses want you to think" at which time she understandably just had to get to the next person in line. At least she didn't start an anti-George Soros rant on me! I assume that somewhere in her heart she does approve of vouchers for charter schools as her home schooled kids do spend a lot of time in 'educational programs' at the local Mega Church
> 
> Allan in WV who has learned his lesson about chatting up chashiers
> 
> On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 7:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Yeah, you can say that again, he says again and, even more straightforwardly, Republicanism in general has foundationally, almost universally, the notion that losers deserve their lack of success because the successful earned theirs. Luck, sickness, institutionalized injustice, any contingency of life......means nothing against 'making it'. 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 6:59 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com <mailto:allan.balliett at gmail.com>> wrote:
> For me, this i "Puritan" crap is the true horror unveiled in DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS. I've always been happy to interpret the Koch Donor Networks meddling in Government to be solely motivated by maximizing their own profits. While I still prefer to think that any faith-based morality their manipulations are shrouded in as camouflage for this greed , Nancy Maclean herself appears to accept that they often act out of a yet to be be fully described "paternalism' and are actually motivated in creating a country that would meet their ideals of holding successful entrepreneurs as blessed by the divine, where no one would benefit from anything they (or their family) hadn't actually earned through the market.  As I believe Rand Paul let out of the bag a while back, it's really ok with the Koch Right  if some 'takers' die because the don't have access to  government supported health insurance. 
> 
> Chapter 7 "A World Gone Mad" demonstrates how Buchanan designed and Koch later implemented the change of public institutions of higher learning from their centuries old standards of academic freedom to corporate training mills where the tenure system has been destroyed, and the Liberal Arts departments have been gutted. Tuitions have been raised and financial support for low income students has become increasingly difficult to get because the engineers of the modern higher education system believe that educating lower income people "who may not have what it takes" to get into management may use their collegiate insights to destabilize the workforce.
> 
> Urgh
> 
> -Allan in WV who is still emotionally upset today from a conversation he had yesterday with a self-described Christian Libertarian
> 
> On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 6:02 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Great writers, great artists, are great because, among other qualities, their vision touches bottom. [ concept gotten from Louis Zukowski on Shakespeare, decades before Bloom repeated it and elaborated] The vision gets reality and pierces it with a 
> deep vision. Their constant tropes and themes are profoundly true over time, don't 'date', reveal as long as always. 
> 
> An unoriginal lead from me to another example of why Pynchon is a great writer, whose vision is still as alive as you and me. Puritanism, Calvinism, on the Elect vs the 
> Damned; the Saved vs the Not [Preterites] is so yesterday historically yet lives sea-changed, redefined maybe all the time. Maybe it is a kind of inherent vice, dunno. 
> 
> BUT, in the aforementioned DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS there is this about the still alive, still donating money---his name is SO BIG as one of the sponsors of Burns' VIETNAM WAR, Charles Koch (and lesser known as the sponsor of the recent BROOKINGS' INSTITUTION (!!) 'junk science' "polling"--an opt-in loaded poll--of college students in summer of 2017 and their supposed stupidity and disbelief in free speech and worse. A study quoted as if true in the Wa-Po and by a NYT columnist and elsewhere all over) : 
> 
> "From Ludwig von Mises, Koch had learned that entrepreneurs were the unsung geniuses of human history, deserving of a kind of reverence reminiscent of the old Puritan doctrine that equated earthly success with divine favor". --p134  
> 
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